Qantas’s first Boeing 787-9 is now under final assembly ahead of its anticipated October delivery date.
A photo posted to Qantas’s Instagram account on Friday shows the fuselage joined to the nose and tail, while the wings were in the process of being attached at Boeing’s Everett facility.
Qantas said recently final assembly would begin on August 10 and take 18 working days to complete, with the aircraft due to roll off the production line by the end of August before entering the paintshop.
The major components for that aircraft, slated to have registration VH-ZNA, such as the nose, tail, fuselage and wings, arrived from their suppliers at Everett at the end of July.
Typically the aircraft would then undertake two test flights with Boeing and then one or two customer acceptance flights ahead of formal handover to Qantas.
The first four of eight Dreamliners Qantas has on firm order are scheduled to operate six times weekly Melbourne-Los Angeles nonstop flights from December and a daily Melbourne-Perth-London rotation from March 2018.
